But to-night Lucia was dreaming of England, the far-away "home" which she had never seen, but of which almost all her elder friends spoke, and where her mother's childhood and girlhood had been passed.

She still leaned her head back lazily as she began to talk.
"Are English sunsets as lovely as ours, Mamma ?" Mrs.Costello smiled.

"I can't tell," she said; "they are as lovely to me,--but I only see them in memory." "You have often talked about going home, when shall it be ?" "I have talked of _your_ going, not of mine--_that_ will never be." "Mamma!" Lucia raised her head.

She looked at her mother inquiringly, but somehow she felt that Mrs.Costello could not talk to her just then.
A troubled expression crossed her own face for a moment, then she put down the ball of wool and laid her arms caressingly round her mother's waist.
But both again remained silent for many minutes, so silent that the faint wash of the river against the bank sounded plainly, and a woodpecker could be heard making his last tap-tap on a tree by the garden-gate.
By-and-by Mrs.Costello spoke again, as if there had been no interruption.

"But about this picnic, Lucia; do you think it would be a great sacrifice to give it up ?" "A great sacrifice?
Why, mamma, you must think me a baby to ask such a question.